What is the significance of look alike and sound alike medications?

What is the significance of look alike and sound alike medications?

Drugs with similar names are a threat to patient safety, and pharmacists must be on high alert when filling and dispensing these medications. Drugs with similar names are a threat to patient safety, and pharmacists must be on high alert when filling and dispensing these medications.

What are the common risk factors associated with sound alike and look alike drug names?

There are many types of medication errors: wrong drug, wrong dose, wrong route of administration, wrong patient etc. Misreading medication names that look similar is a common mistake. These look-alike medication names may also sound alike and can lead to errors associated with verbal prescriptions.

What is the definition of look alike drugs?

Look alike and sound alike (LASA) drugs are just that – drugs with similar looking and similar sounding names. Despite their similar names, the drugs often have very different actions within the body, and mistaking one for the other could have devastating effects. Just as many drugs look the same, so can drug names.

What method is recommended to prevent medication errors between medications that look and sound alike?

Tall Man lettering is an error-prevention strategy used to reduce the risk of look-alike medicine names errors. Tall Man lettering uses a combination of lower and upper case letters to highlight the differences between look-alike medicine names, helping to make them more easily distinguishable.

What is a look alike sound alike medication?

What are look-alike sound-alike drugs? LASA drugs are medications that look or sound similar to each other, either by their generic name, or brand name. They might have similar packaging, similar-sounding names, or similar spellings. For example, Prozac sounds a lot like Prilosec when said out loud.

How often can look alike sound alike and high alert medication list be updated?

EP 3 The organization annually reviews and, as necessary, revises its list of look-alike/sound-alike medications.

What is the special danger in using look alike drugs?

Similarity as a cause of error. “Patients sometimes receive the wrong drug because similarity in the spelling and/or pronunciation of drug names leads to errors in prescribing, dispensing and administration.”

What are some look alike sound alike drugs?

Examples of look-alike sound-alike medications are prednisone and prednisolone, dopamine and dobutamine, and dimenhydrinate and diphenhydramine.

What does Lasa mean?

LASA. Look Alike Sound Alike (drug naming; also seen as LA/SA)

How do you store look-alike sound-alike drugs?

Warning stickers pink in color and stating Sound-alike or Look-alike Medications need to be pasted on the storage racks in pharmacy. In the ward/unit, emergency, or operation theater, cupboards storing the SALA drugs should have the pink colored SALA medication warning label/sticker outside the cupboard.

What is look-alike sound-alike drugs?

What are look-alike sound-alike drugs? LASA drugs are medications that look or sound similar to each other, either by their generic name, or brand name. They might have similar packaging, similar-sounding names, or similar spellings.

What is a look alike drug?

look-alike drug 1. Any of a group of solid dosage forms of drugs that mimic various prescription drugs by size, shape, color, and markings. 2. A drug that works much like another but varies in a minor or insignificant part of its chemical structure.

What are the different classifications of medication?

From the broadest perspective, the USP currently categorizes a drug or drug component under one of 49 different therapeutic classes: Analgesics, including opioids and non-opioids. Anesthetics. Antibacterials , including antibiotics. Anticonvulsants . Antidementia agents. Antidepressants.

What is a high alert drug?

High alert medications are those drugs which are involved in a higher percentage of medication incidences and/or sentinel and significant events, or that carry an increased risk for error, abuse, injury or other adverse outcomes.